Lily Allen – is she angry or just about to get her period? (Picture: supplied)

Review: Lily Allen – Sheezus (Parlophone)

After two multi-platinum albums, nobody really believed Lily Allen was retiring at the age of 23. This comeback ranges over a subtly diverse array of styles, from the autotuned dancehall pop of L8 CMMR to the twangy country of As Long As I Got You.

The latter features Allen’s stand-out lyrical ability, detailing a happily messy marital bliss in her inimitable style: ‘Staying at home with you is better than sticking things up my nose.’

She’s always excelled at delivering caustic social commentary in an unnervingly sweet, sing-song style, and pulls no punches here.

The title track, built over an airy, mocking loop of ‘ha-ha-ha’s’, slams the way the music industry pits female stars against each other – while at the same time still seeming to mock various artists.

On the one hand, you know it’s all said flippantly – Allen didn’t call her album Sheezus because she thinks she’s the female Kanye, but because she thought it was funny. That said, combative is the default setting.

This is not solid gold – we could have done without the Lily-does-a- sex-jam of Close Your Eyes, not to mention the dreaded Keane cover tacked at the end.

But thank God for a female pop star with the guts to sing: ‘It makes me angry, I’m serious/but then again I’m just about to get my period’ with such impish glee.

This isn’t Allen’s best album by a long way but it’s brilliant to have her back – calling out all that’s fake and phoney wherever and however she sees it.